1. What is the importance of stretching before and after exercising? What are some good stretching exercises?
Stretching your body before and exercise session prepares your muscles for higher impact movements by increasing blood flow to those areas as well as decreasing the likelihood of injury. Stretching after an exercise session will help muscle flexibility and alleviate any discomforts associated with tightness in the muscles used.

2. Why is activity and exercise important to overall good health?
The old saying, if you don’t use it, you lose it is not a myth. Exercise and staying active will help slow down the aging process while increasing bone strength, muscular endurance and lung capacity to extract oxygen from the air we breathe. Most importantly, it increases our heart’s strength, which is a muscle (i.e., if you strengthen a muscle, it will last longer).

3. What exercises burn the most fat?
Everyone burns calories differently. However, slow rhythmic exercise such as jogging, swimming or riding a bicycle at a lower intensity has proven to burn fat more efficiently than higher intensity exercises such as sprinting. The reasoning behind this philosophy is that fat is a good source of fuel during low-intensity exercises when your breathing rate and oxygen use can keep up with the demands of the exercise. This type of exercise is often referred to as aerobic meaning with oxygen. Carbohydrates, on the other hand, are better suited as a fuel during high-intensity efforts when breathing rate or oxygen needs fall short of the energy demands of the exercise. This type of high-intensity exercise is called anaerobic or without oxygen.

4. What exercises are good for strength and which ones are good for cardiovascular health?
The bench press and squat have been the strongman’s focus for years because they concentrate on the major muscle groups. Other exercises for strength include bicep curls, triceps extensions, shoulder shrugs and hamstring curls. These auxiliary exercises often target minor or smaller muscle groups. As for cardiovascular health, jogging, riding a bike, swimming, rowing and jumping rope all help improve the cardiovascular system. The exercise must be continuous in nature using large muscle groups.

5. What are some assessments one can do on their own to gage their need for fitness and exercise?
Self-assessments include:

Basic push-up test to assess muscular strength
1 mile jog/run times to assess cardiovascular strength
Chin-ups to assess body strength
Squats or leg press to measure lower body strength